Sunday Best: A thumb of the nose to prognosticators

Sportswriters and pundits from the blogosphere aren't giving defensive lineman Frank Trotter, coach Larry Porter and the Memphis Tigers much respect heading into this season.

They're marketing a new University of Memphis foam finger this football season.

It's the familiar blue hand with a single finger raised, but it's not the usual finger, if you know what I mean.

Actually, I made that up. But if I were a Memphis fan, I might want to flip off the college football cognoscenti, who are saying some particularly nasty things about the boys in blue.

OK, OK, you're Tiger football fans. You're used to abuse. You're the very definition of long-suffering. At this point, why bother lifting a hand -- much less a certain finger -- to the haters?

But, really, have you heard what they're saying?

We're No. 118!

No. 118 -- out of 120! That's where the Orlando Sentinel ranks Memphis in its "College Football Countdown."

"While Memphis has the potential to win more than one game in 2011," the Sentinel's Matt Murschel writes, "the heavily reliance on newcomers and a lot of tough opponents on the schedule will probably add up to another difficult season for the Tigers."

The potential to win more than one game.

Wow. Kind of hard to believe the U of M marketing department didn't go with that instead of "Join the Revolution" for the big billboard campaign.

Um, make that 119

That's where Patrick Stevens of The Washington Times ranks the U of M.

"The Tigers made five bowl appearances between 2003 and 2008, so it's certainly plausible for (Larry) Porter to build them back into a middle-of-the-road outfit in C-USA," he writes. "Just don't expect to see much tangible progress this fall; the deck is severely stacked against a team coming off consecutive seasons with double-digit losses."

Yardbarker.com likewise ranked the Tigers No. 119, with one of the site's bloggers writing: "It's embarrassing for Memphis to be a mid-major powerhouse in basketball but just roll over and die on the gridiron. Aside from Austin Peay and possibly Middle Tennessee, I don't see a winnable game on the schedule."

Mid-major powerhouse in basketball? Geez, even the compliments are back-handed.

But wait ...

We're No. 3!

Well, yeah, but on the list of "The Least Watchable College Football Teams In Recent Memory: A Loathing Compendium."

No, I didn't know such a list existed, either. But blogger Spencer Hall of sbnation.com has compiled it, and so we pass it along. Hall actually doubles his displeasure with Memphis, making the Tigers "the only multi-year nominee here" -- Tommy West's 2-10 team of 2009 and Larry Porter's 1-11 2010 squad.

"Some teams lose with valor," Hall writes, "and are thus fun to watch in the way that reading a Hemingway short story is: you know this ends with blood poisoning killing the narrator, but the drinks and stoic bitterness along the way will give it all a kind of sepia-toned dignity."

The bottom line

I'm a Faulkner man, myself, but I read Hemingway's "The Snows of Kilimanjaro," searching for parallels to Memphis football.

To summarize, it's the story of a writer, dying of bitterness, self-loathing, regret and gangrene (mostly gangrene), as zebra and wildebeest frolic on the African plains while Hemingway employs the phrase "and then" a whopping 28 times.

So, is the blogger Hall saying Tiger football is less fun than gangrene?

Well, in a way, that's what they're all saying, isn't it? They're saying the Tigers have been pretty much the dregs of the land, and in all likelihood will continue to be.

Ah, but don't let it get you down, Tiger fans. This is the season of talk, of presuming and prognosticating and generally making like you know what the heck's gonna happen before it happens.

Actual football season will be here soon.

And then, as I believe Papa Hemingway would have put it, they play the games.